Komodo Liveaboard: Day 3

Geared up and ready to go

 Dive 1: Batu Balong

    This is one of the premier dives in Komodo. If you only have a couple days in the park then this site should make the list. It is an exposed rock pinnacle that tumbles down into the depths. The walls are covered with soft coral of greens and pinks and fish of every color swim nearby. Big pelagic fish come in for closer looks here all the time. We had some dogtooth tuna, a massive napolean wrasse, a white tip reef shark, and lots of big jacks swimming along the wall here. Then angelfish and anthias swarm closer to the reef making the whole wall look alive.

Juvenile Angelfish

 We had seen several adult angelfish on our dives here and Bali, but this was the first place of the trip where we found juvenile angelfish. Besides looking nothing like the adults, these juveniles may just be the wildest and most beautiful of any fish on the reef. Their irridescent blues and psychodelic patterns put them in a class all of their own.

   I was told to bring a wide angle lens here and I was so glad I did. Not only was the visibility amazing, but it allowed me to capture real snap shots in just how 'fishy' the reef was. I felt like every color was represented by either fish or coral. This was another spot that Heidi and I almost refused to get out of. Of course the temperature of the water hovering around 85 degrees didn't hurt us wanting to stay either.

Napolean Wrasse

 Dive 2: Makassar

 Our second dive of the day was a place that almost guarantees manta ray encounters. The spot, known as Makassar, has a rubbly bottom with some big coral bommies and some pretty intense current. Usually what happens here is the manta ray will swim over one of these bommies, then hover in the current letting it push water over it's gills, while all the little cleaner fish that live on the bommie swim up and clean off the hovering manta. But when we dropped in today we found again...no current.

   But our hopes were still high for mantas and low and behold there they were! We saw a couple of mantas at the first coral bommie we swam up to and had no problem taking pictures because of the low current. We even had one manta sneak up behind us and I snapped a great picture of the moment when Tim realized a giant 12ft manta ray was swimming right next to him.

  What really surprised us was how good a muck dive Makassar turned out to be. Whenever we looked down at the rubble we notice is was crawling with nudibranchs. We saw a couple that we had only seen once before. As you can tell by the picture this made Heidi very happy.

  Dive 3: Sraba Besar

Flamboyant Cuttlefish

Sea Horse

After our big dive with mantas we went back to our night dive spot of Sraba Besar to see how different it was in the daytime. I was pretty shocked out many wild creatures we managed to find just hanging out over the sand.

  We had three more flamboyant cuttlefish, a little brown sea horse, and Heidi found the cutest all white frogfish. The lionfish from the night before were nowhere to be seen.

  Then towards the end of the dive we kicked across the sand over to the reef and immediately found ourselves in turtle central. From one spot we could see one hawksbill and six green sea turtles. One of the green sea turtles had a couple of large remoras on its shell. We ended the dive with a false clownfish photo shoot.

Turtle with remoras

  After this dive we had a discussion on board about whether to stay in the clear water of the North, or try our luck with the so-so visibility reports coming out of the South. We all decided to be adventurous and head south so we dropped our mooring and set off for the land of the dragons.

Komodo Dragon

Lightning Over the Crew

  It took us about three hours to get to the south part of Rinca Island. The surrounding scenery became more and more dramatic as we pulled into our mooring spot. The lush jungle of south Rinca coming right down to the sandy beach reminded me of some Hollywood movie like King Kong. No buildings, boats, roads, or cars were anywhere in sight.

South Rinca View

      However there was movement in the forest just behind the beach. Moments later a large reptile high walked out of the forest and we realized we were looking at a Komodo dragon. Heidi and I paddle boarded around the coastline here, although we did stay a safe distance away from the beach since there were now five dragons checking us out. And to add to the mystique of the area a thunder lightning storm rolled through just south of us. I tried to capture some of the storm with a long exposure while the crew played music on the top deck. Another good day on Amalia.